Chapter 176: The First Sign of a Rift

Casterly Rock, the lord’s study. The hearth threw its moving shadows across Arthur’s furrowed brow, and on the desk before him the urgent letters from Grey Creek Fort and the latest reports out of Moat Cailin and Oath Keep had piled into a small mountain.

The attack at Howling Mountain Pass had been thrown back. Tormund’s people, after days of shouting at one another around a fire, had been steadied for now by Old Hake and his unanswerable argument about staying alive. The radicals had not been convinced: Bone-Breaker and Rat-Eye were meeting the Vale’s envoys more often now, and more quietly, and the Vale’s infiltration and agitation went on spreading through the loose soil of the Gift like poison ivy. All of it troublesome, and all of it inside what Arthur had expected and inside the frame of the final contingency. Torren had handled it correctly and in time, and the base was holding.

What put the cold light in his eyes was the last paragraph of Torren’s letter, written in a heavier hand than the rest and very nearly a question put to his liege:

This Vale force, some three hundred men, was extremely well equipped. More than half wore studded composite leather or even light mail. Their weapons were standardized: hand axes, short spears, hunting bows. Their coordination was practiced. These were not mountain bandits or scattered sellswords. And their line of retreat ran neither east toward the Bloody Gate nor south into the depth of the Gift, but northwest, scattering into the hills and forests toward Queenscrown and White Harbor. Our scouts followed them to the edge of the Frost Whisper Wood and lost the trail. There were fresh signs of a large body of men passing through, and abnormal wheel ruts on the merchant road toward White Harbor. My lord, I am at a loss. How does a Vale army pass the triple bar of the Bloody Gate, Harrenhal, and Moat Cailin and appear like ghosts behind Grey Creek Fort? I will dare to say it plainly: unless there are mountain paths we do not know, then the sea lanes of White Harbor may no longer be as smooth as we believe.

“White Harbor,” he said aloud, to the empty room, and the name sounded worse spoken than it had looked on the page.

Arthur’s fingers came down hard on the map, on the icon of the greatest port in the North. His gaze traveled slowly from Grey Creek Fort along the land and coast that joined the Gift to White Harbor, and settled on the port itself, sharp as an ice pick.

The Flint fleet at Widow’s Watch held the Vale’s coast under its eye. Kator’s people at Harrenhal watched the Bloody Gate. Alfie’s men held the Neck. Jason patrolled the water. On paper, a large-scale infiltration of Vale soldiers into the heart of the North, culminating in a precise blow to Grey Creek’s flank, was very close to impossible. Unless there was a road everyone had overlooked, or one that someone had deliberately concealed, or one that someone had helpfully kept open.

And the likeliest such road ran through White Harbor.

The North’s great trade hub, in constant traffic with the far side of the narrow sea, with the Vale, with half the southern kingdoms. Lord Wyman Manderly, the fat whale, famous for his appetite and, among those who paid attention, for his cunning, had reached an understanding with Arthur when the albatross warning came: accepting aid, extending port courtesies, watching the Vale’s coast, keeping an eye out. But an understanding was an understanding, not an oath sworn on a heart tree. Under the Iron Throne’s decrees, the Vale’s blandishments and threats, and the North’s own deepening chaos, had the scales in that shrewd old man’s chest tipped again?

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It could be done easily enough. Vale ships dressed as merchantmen, folded into the ordinary traffic in and out of White Harbor, carrying small parties of elite soldiers and their gear a few at a time. Then, with the tacit consent of certain men in the port, or their outright help, the parties break up smaller, become caravan guards and sellswords and refugees, ride the port’s own land routes north and west, and gather in the Frost Whisper Wood to fall on Grey Creek. And on the way out they scatter into hills they know, with guides who know them better, along retreat routes arranged before the first man ever landed.

“Alwin.” His voice was calm, and the steward at his elbow felt the chill of it anyway.

“My lord.”

“Under the highest security, open a full emergency investigation into White Harbor. Lord Wyman Manderly first, and then his family, his confidants, his port officials, and every resident merchant of weight. Use every eye we have there, including the lines Lord Manderly himself handed us when he was being cooperative. What I want: for the past month, every ship, every man, and every cargo arriving at White Harbor from the Vale, from Braavos, from Pentos, from anywhere that trades closely with the Vale, with particular attention to hulls that unloaded and left in a hurry, or that stayed a strangely short time. Whether there has been unusual hiring or gathering of sellswords and caravan guards in the city, and where those men have gone. And the frequency and the substance of every private contact between House Manderly and the Vale’s envoys and merchants, as much of it as can be got.

“And order our people at Moat Cailin and Oath Keep to tighten inspection on every man and every caravan coming from the direction of White Harbor, above all those bound for the Gift or for Grey Creek. Anything suspicious is detained on the spot and questioned hard.”

“At once, my lord.” Alwin’s heart went cold as he wrote. The lord was truly suspicious this time, and the object of it was the wavering, indispensable great house of the North.

“There is more.” Arthur crossed to the map, and his finger swept from White Harbor to Grey Creek, then to Moat Cailin and the Gift. “The attack on Grey Creek says that the northern line we believed was solid rock has opened a fissure. The fissure may be at White Harbor. It may also be that White Harbor is not the only one.”

His gaze went distant. “If the Vale can put three hundred picked men through, it can put more. Petyr’s aim was never to harass a reclamation fort. He means to disorder the whole North, manufacture chaos everywhere at once, and build the pretext and the conditions for his main host to march north openly. The pressure on Alfie at Moat Cailin and on Torren at Grey Creek will only rise. And Jon.”

He thought of the bastard brother struggling to consolidate at Winterfell under the banner of Warden of the North. Jon’s position was worse than either of theirs. Beyond the Vale’s open and hidden strokes and the centrifugal pull of his own lords, he had Lord Carrell’s supervision at his shoulder and less room to move by the week. If White Harbor truly harbored other intentions, the blow to him would be mortal: it would take away his most important road for supply by sea and his most valuable potential ally, and leave him a beast in a trap, landlocked.

“Another secret letter to Jon Snow,” Arthur said after a moment. “Not through White Harbor. Our most secure overland channel, relayed through Moat Cailin. Set out plainly the questions raised by the attack on Grey Creek and by the enemy’s line of retreat, and name the risk on the White Harbor lane. Tell him to be extremely careful of supplies, men, and information arriving from that quarter. Suggest he verify what comes from White Harbor before it is distributed, and that he open, where he can, alternative lines that do not depend on it: the land route by Seagard and Moat Cailin, or closer ties with the mountain clans farther east.

“And say again, in the strongest terms I have, that the west and the Trident stand behind Stark and behind the North. Whatever White Harbor decides, the line at Grey Creek and Moat Cailin will do everything it can to hold the east and the Gift’s edge steady for him, and we are prepared to give limited, direct military support on his request, with the signals and the methods agreed between us beforehand and exactly. But the promise carries a condition, and he must read it as one: he holds Winterfell firmly, and he keeps the Moat Cailin channel absolutely safe.”